An attempt is made to share the truth regarding issues concerning Israel and her right to exist as a Jewish nation. This blog has expanded to present information about radical Islam and its potential impact upon Israel and the West. Yes, I do mix in a bit of opinion from time to time.

Thursday, June 05, 2014

Palestinian Leaders Don't Want an Independent State

The Palestinian leadership's serial rejection of the numerous
opportunities for statehood since the Peel Commission report of 1937
casts a serious doubt on its interest in the creation of an independent
state. Instead of engaging in the daunting tasks of nation-building and
state creation, all Palestinian leaders without any exception—from the
Jerusalem mufti Hajj Amin Husseini, who led the Palestinian Arabs from
the early 1920s to the late 1940s; to Yasser Arafat, who dominated
Palestinian politics from the mid-1960s to his death in November 2004;
to Mahmoud Abbas—have preferred to immerse their hapless constituents in
disastrous conflicts that culminated in their collective undoing and
continued statelessness. At the same time, of course, these leaders have
lined their pockets from the proceeds of this ongoing tragedy.
It can be shown that the main sources of this self-destructive
conduct are pan-Arab delusions, Islamist ideals, and the vast financial
and political gains attending the perpetuation of Palestinian misery.

Pan-Arab Delusions

Jerusalem
mufti Hajj Amin Husseini (left), in one of his letters to Hitler
(right), did not speak of Palestinian aspirations, but rather, pan-Arab
goals: "[T]he Arab people … confidently expects that the result of your
final victory will be their independence and complete liberation, as
well as the creation of their unity, when they will be linked to your
country by a treaty of friendship and cooperation."

In discussions of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, it is
rarely acknowledged that, as products of the Ottoman imperial system
where religion constituted the linchpin of the sociopolitical order of
things,
Palestinian Arab leaders during the British mandate era (1920-48) had
no real grasp of the phenomenon of nationalism, hence, had no interest
in the evolution of a distinct Palestinian nation. Instead they were
wedded to the pan-Arab dream of a unified "Arab nation" (of which
"Palestine" was but a tiny fragment) or the associated ideology of
Greater Syria (Suriya al-Kubra), stressing the territorial and historical indivisibility of most of the Fertile Crescent.
As early as October 1919, Musa Kazim Husseini, a former Ottoman
official, elected Jerusalem mayor under the British, told a Zionist
acquaintance that "we demand no separation from Syria."[1]
Six months later, in April 1920, his peers instigated the first
anti-Jewish pogrom in Jerusalem—not in the name of Palestine's
independence but under the demand for its incorporation into the
(short-lived) Syrian kingdom headed by Faisal ibn Hussein of Mecca, the
celebrated hero of the "Great Arab Revolt" against the Ottoman Empire
and the effective leader of the nascent pan-Arab movement. Four years
later, in a special report to the League of Nations, the Arab Executive
Committee (AEC), the umbrella organization of the Palestinian Arabs,
still referred to Palestine as the unlawfully severed southern part of
"the one country of Syria, with its one population of the same language,
origin, customs, and religious beliefs, and its natural boundaries."[2]
And in June 1926, the league's permanent mandates commission was
informed of an Arab complaint that "it was not in conformity with
Article 22 of the Mandate to print the initials and even the words
'Eretz Israel' after the name 'Palestine' while refusing the Arabs the
title 'Surial Janonbiah' ['Southern Syria']."[3]
In July 1937, the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), the AEC's successor,
justified its rejection of the Peel Commission's recommendation for the
partition of Palestine on the grounds that "this country does not belong
only to [the] Palestine Arabs but to the whole Arab and Muslim Worlds."[4]
As late as August 1947, three months before the passing of the U.N.
resolution partitioning Mandate Palestine into Arab and Jewish states,
the AHC's mouthpiece al-Wahda advocated the incorporation of Palestine (and Transjordan) into "Greater Syria."[5]
Hajj Amin Husseini himself never acted as a local patriot seeking
national self-determination but rather as an aspiring pan-Arab regional
advocate. An early admirer of the "Greater Syrian" ideal, he co-edited
the Jerusalem-based newspaper Suria al-Janubiyya and presided
over the city'sArab Club, which advocated Palestine's annexation to
Syria. He cast his sights much higher after fleeing the country in 1937
to avoid arrest by the British for the instigation of nationwide
violence: Presenting himself to Hitler and Mussolini as a spokesman for
the entire "Arab nation," Husseini argued that the Palestine problem
necessitated an immediate solution not because of the national
aspirations of the Palestinian Arabs but because it constituted "an
obstacle to the unity and independence of the Arab countries by pitting
them directly against the Jews of the entire world, dangerous enemies,
whose secret arms are money, corruption, and intrigue." His proposed
solution, therefore, was not Palestinian statehood but "the independence
of [unified] Palestine, Syria, and Iraq" under his leadership. As he
put it in one of his letters to Hitler, "[T]he Arab people, slandered,
maltreated, and deceived by our common enemies, confidently expects that
the result of your final victory will be their independence and
complete liberation, as well as the creation of their unity, when they
will be linked
to your country by a treaty of friendship and cooperation."[6]
While the young generation of diaspora Palestinian activists who
began organizing in the 1950s witha view to avenging the 1948
"catastrophe"of the creation of Israel did not share the mufti's
grandiose ambitions, they were no less committed to the pan-Arab ideal
as evidenced by the name of the first "resistance" group—the Arab
Nationalist Movement (ANM). The pan-Arab ideal was also evident in the
diverse composition of the movement comprising Palestinian (e.g., George
Habash, Wadi Haddad) and Arab activists (notably Hani Hindi, scion of a
respected Damascene family).[7]

Ahmad
Shuqeiri, a Lebanon-born politician of mixed Egyptian, Hijazi, and
Turkish descent, became the founding chairman of the Palestine
Liberation Organization. But in May 1956, he told the U.N. Security
Council, "Palestine is part and parcel in the Arab homeland," adding
that Palestine "is nothing but southern Syria."

Another prominent adherent to the pan-Arab ideal was Ahmad Shuqeiri, a
Lebanon-born politician of mixed Egyptian, Hijazi, and Turkish descent,
who served as the Arab League's deputy secretary-general and as the
Syrian and Saudi delegate to the U.N. before becoming, on May 28, 1964,
the founding chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),
established that day by the Arab states at the initiative of Egyptian
president Gamal Abdel Nasser.
"Palestine is part and parcel in the Arab home-land," Shuqeiri told
the U.N. Security Council on May 31, 1956: "The Arab world is not
prepared to surrender one single atom of their right to this sacred
territory." Clarifying to which part of the "Arab homeland" this
specific territory belonged, he added that Palestine "is nothing but
southern Syria." In his account, "the Palestine area was linked to Syria
from time immemorial" and "there was no question of separation" until
the great powers brought this about by creating mandates under the
League of Nations, with Britain controlling Palestine and France
administering Syria.[8]
Against this backdrop, it is hardly surprising that the PLO's
hallowed founding document, the Palestinian Charter, adopted upon its
formation and revised four years later to reflect the organization's
growing militancy, has little to say about the Palestinians themselves.
Devoting about two-thirds of its thirty-three articles to the need to
destroy Israel, it defines the Palestinians as "an integral part of the
Arab nation" rather than a distinct nationality and vows allegiance to
the ideal of pan-Arab unity—that is to Palestine's eventual assimilation
into "the greater Arab homeland"—while seeking to harness this ideal to
its short-term ends:

The destiny of the Arab Nation and, indeed, Arab
existence itself depend upon the destiny of the Palestinian cause. From
this inter-dependence springs the Arab nation's pursuit of, and striving
for, the liberation of Palestine. … Arab unity and the liberation of
Palestine are two complementary objectives, the attainment of either of
which facilitates the attainment of the other. Thus, Arab unity leads to
the liberation of Palestine, the liberation of Palestine leads to Arab
unity; and work toward the realization of one objective proceeds side by
side with work toward the realization of the other.[9]

Jewish
rabbis purchasing land from an Arab landowner (left), 1920s. In Mandate
Palestine, ordinary Arabs were persecuted and murdered by their alleged
betters for the crime of "selling Palestine" to the Jews. Meanwhile,
these same betters were enriching themselves with impunity. Many
prominent leaders made a handsome profit by selling land to Jews.

Even the November 1988 "declaration of independence" by the Palestine
National Council, the PLO's "parliament," while obviously endorsing the
idea of Palestinian statehood (in language that massively plagiarized
Israel's proclamation of independence),[10]
vows allegiance to the pan-Arab ideal by describing the "State of
Palestine" as "an integral part of the Arab nation, of its heritage and
civilization and of its present endeavor for the achievement of the
goals of liberation, development, democracy and unity."[11]
As late as 2002, eight years after the establishment of a
PLO-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip to lay the groundwork for Palestinian statehood in these
territories, the prominent Israeli Arab politician Azmi Bishara,
founding leader of the nationalist Balad Party (with seats in the
Israeli parliament since 1999), asserted that "my Palestinian identity
never precedes my Arab identity.… I don't think there is a Palestinian
nation, there is [only] an Arab nation.… Palestine until the end of the
nineteenth century was the southern part of Greater Syria," and the idea
of a distinct Palestinian nation is a "colonialist invention" that
happens to coincide with the consistent Israeli attempt, by both left-
and rightwing parties, to ignore the reality of pan-Arab nationalism.[12]
While such plain speaking is hardly commonplace in PLO/PA current
rhetoric, these words help explain the group's continued subscription to
the pan-Arab ideal as evidenced by its deliberate failure to revise the
Palestinian Charter so as to acknowledge the distinctness of
Palestinian nationalism; the frequent articulation of pan-Arab themes by
its tightly controlled media; its constitutional definition of the
prospective state of Palestine as "part of the Arab homeland" committed
to the "goal of Arab unity";[13]
and the steady reiteration of the claim that the Palestinians are not
fighting for their own corner but are rather the Arab nation's "front
line of defense."[14]
No less important, the PLO continues to subordinate its policies, and
by extension Palestinian self-interest, to pan-Arab approval—and veto—as
illustrated most recently by Abbas's successful rallying of the Arab
League behind his "absolute and decisive rejection to recognizing Israel
as a Jewish state."[15]
Upholding this position—sixty-six years after the creation of a
Jewish state by an internationally recognized act of
self-determination—effectively amounts to the rejection of Palestinian
statehood for the simple reason that Israel would not self-destruct
while the Palestinians and the Arab states are in no position to bring
this about.

Islamist Imperial Dreams

If subscription to the pan-Arab dream has made the Palestinian cause
captive to inter-Arab machinations, stirring unrealistic hopes and
expectations in Palestinian political circles and, at key junctures,
inciting widespread and horrifically destructive violence that has made
the likelihood of Palestinian statehood ever more remote, adherence to
Islamist ideals has subordinated Palestinian identity to the far wider
ambition of Islamic world domination.
Consider the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known by its Arabic acronym Hamas. Since making its debut in the 1987-92 intifada,
Hamas has established itself as the foremost political and military
Palestinian force, winning a landslide victory in the 2006 general
elections and evicting the PLO from Gaza the following year. Far from
being an ordinary liberation movement in search of national
self-determination, Hamas has subordinated its aim of bringing about the
destruction of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state on its
ruins to the wider goal of establishing Allah's universal empire. In
doing so, it has followed in the footsteps of its Egyptian parent
organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, which viewed its violent
opposition to Zionism from the 1930s and 1940s as an integral part of
the Manichean struggle for the creation of a worldwide caliphate rather
than as a defense of the Palestinian Arabs' national rights. In the
words of the senior Hamas leader Mahmud Zahar, "Islamic and traditional
views reject the notion of establishing an independent Palestinian state
… In the past, there was no independent Palestinian state. … [Hence]
our main goal is to establish a great Islamic state, be it pan-Arabic or
pan-Islamic."[16]
He further explained: "Our position stems from our religious
convictions … This is a holy land. It is not the property of the
Palestinians or the Arabs. This land is the property of all Muslims in
all parts of the world."[17]
Echoing standard Muslim Brotherhood precepts, Hamas's covenant
adopted in 1988 presents the organization as designed not merely to
"liberate Palestine from Zionist occupation" but to pursue the far
loftier goals of spreading Islam's holy message and defending the weak
and oppressed throughout the world: "As the Islamic Resistance Movement
paves its way, it will back the oppressed and support the wronged
[throughout the world] in all its might. It will spare no effort to
bring about justice and defeat injustice, in word and deed, in this
place and everywhere it can reach and have influence therein."[18]
As the movement's slogan puts it: "Allah is [Hamas's] target, the
Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path, and
death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes."[19]

Palestinian
Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar walks on an Israeli flag during a rally to
mark the anniversary of the group's founding, Gaza City, December 9,
2010. Despite its anti-Israel rhetoric, Hamas has subordinated its aim
of destroying the Jewish state and creating a Palestinian state to the
wider goal of establishing a universal Islamic empire. Zahar explained:
"Islamic and traditional views reject the notion of establishing an
independent Palestinian state … [Hence] our main goal is to establish a
great Islamic state."

In other words, the "question of Palestine" is neither an ordinary
territorial dispute between two national movements nor a struggle by an
indigenous population against a foreign occupier. It is an integral part
of Islam's millenarian jihad to expand its domain and prevent the fall
of any of its parts to the infidels: "[T]he land of Palestine is an
Islamic Waqf [Islamic religious endowment] consecrated for future Moslem
generations until Judgment Day. … The day that enemies usurp part of
Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem."[20]
In this respect, there is no difference between Palestine and other
parts of the world conquered by the forces of Islam throughout history.
To this very day, for example, Arabs and many Muslims unabashedly pine
for the restoration of Muslim Spain and look upon their expulsion from
that country in 1492 as a grave historical injustice. Indeed, even
countries that have never been under Islamic imperial rule have become
legitimate targets of Islamist fervor. Since the late 1980s, various
Islamist movements have looked upon the growing number of French Muslims
as a sign that France, too, has become a potential part of the House of
Islam. Their British counterparts have followed suit. "We will remodel
this country in an Islamic image," the London-based preacher Sheikh Omar
Bakri Muhammad told an attentive audience less than two months after
9/11. "We will replace the Bible with the Qur'an."[21]
Khaled Mash'al, head of Hamas's political bureau and the
organization's effective leader, echoed this sentiment as a tidal wave
of Muslim violence swept across the world in response to satirical
depictions of the prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper in February
2006:

By Allah, you will be defeated ... Hurry up and apologize
to our nation, because if you do not, you will regret it. This is
because our nation is progressing and is victorious ... Tomorrow, our
nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the
imagination but a fact. Tomorrow we will lead the world, Allah willing.
Apologize today, before remorse will do you no good.[22]

Nor is this supremacist worldview limited to Hamas. Since its rise in
the early seventh century, Islam has constituted the linchpin of Middle
Eastern politics, and its hold on Palestinian society is far stronger
than is commonly recognized. Contrary to the received wisdom in the
West, the PLO is hardly a secular organization. Arafat was a devout
Muslim, associated in his early days with the Muslim Brotherhood, as
were other founding fathers of Fatah, the PLO's foremost constituent
organization. And while the new generation of Fatah leaders in the
territories may be less religious, they, nevertheless, have a draft
constitution for a prospective Palestinian state stipulating that "Islam
is the official religion in Palestine" and Shari'a is "a main source
for legislation."[23]
They have, moreover, utilized the immense inflammatory potential of
Islam to discredit the two-state solution—and by implication, the
prospect of Palestinian statehood—and to express their grandiose
supremacist delusions. In the words of the official PA television,
"Where did Great Britain disappear? By Allah's will, He will get rid of
the US like he got rid of them. We [Muslims] have ruled the world; a day
will come by Allah, and we shall rule the world [again]. The day will
come, and we shall rule America; the day will come, and we shall rule
Britain. We shall rule the entire world."[24]
Within these grand overlapping schemes of pan-Arab regional unity and
Islamic world domination, the notion of Palestinian statehood is but a
single transient element whose supposed centrality looms far greater in
Western than in Islamic and Arab eyes.

Profits of Misery

But whatever their ideological and political convictions, Palestinian
leaders have never had a real stake in statehood both because the hopes
and wishes of their constituents did not figure in their calculations
and because they have vastly profited from having their hapless
constituents run around in circles for nearly a century while milking
world sympathy for the plight they have brought about in the first
place.
In Mandate Palestine, ordinary Arabs were persecuted and murdered by
their alleged betters for the crime of "selling Palestine" to the Jews.
Meanwhile, these same betters were enriching themselves with impunity.
The staunch pan-Arabist Awni Abdel Hadi, who vowed to fight "until
Palestine is either placed under a free Arab government or becomes a
graveyard for all the Jews in the country,"[25]facilitated
the transfer of 7,500 acres to the Zionist movement, and some of his
relatives, all respected political and religious figures, went a step
further by selling actual plots of land. Many prominent leaders
including Muin Madi, Alfred Rock, and As'ad Shuqeiri (father of Ahmad,
PLO founder) also sold land. Musa Alami, who bragged to David Ben-Gurion
that "he would prefer the land to remain poor and desolate even for
another hundred years" if the alternative was its rapid development in
collaboration with the Zionists,[26] made a handsome profit by selling 225 acres to the Jews.
So, too, did numerous members of the Husseini family, the foremost
Palestinian Arab clan during the mandate period, including Musa Kazim
(father of Abdel Qader Husseini, the famous guerrilla leader) and
Muhammad Tahir, Hajj Amin's father.[27]
Hajj Amin himself had few qualms about profiting from the Jewish
national revival, which he sought to eradicate whenever this suited his
needs. Prior to his appointment as the Jerusalem mufti, he pleaded with
Jewish leaders to lobby on his behalf with (the Jewish) Herbert Samuel,
the first British high commissioner for Palestine, and in 1927, he asked
Gad Frumkin, the only Jewish Supreme Court justice during the mandatory
era, to influence Jerusalem's Jewish community to back the Husseini
candidate in the mayoral elections. He likewise employed a Jewish
architect to build a luxury hotel for the Supreme Muslim Council, which
he headed, while ordering his constituents to boycott Jewish labor and
products.[28] Needless to say, the mufti never sought to apply to his own father his religious authorization (fatwa) on the killing of those who sold land to Jews.
"Arab nationalist feelings were never allowed to harm the interests
of the Husseini family," wrote the prominent Jerusalem lawyer and
Zionist activist Bernard (Dov) Joseph, a future minister of justice in
the Israeli government:

One of [the mufti's] kinsmen, Jamil Husseini, had once
engaged my services in land litigation which went as high as the Privy
Council in London … For years, one of the Mufti's close relations
prospered mightily by forcing Arab small-holders to sell land, at
niggardly prices, which he then resold to Jews at a handsome profit.[29]

This institutionalized racketeering skyrocketed to new heights under
the PLO. Just as the Palestinian leadership during the mandate had no
qualms about inciting its constituents against Zionism and Jews while
lining its own pockets from the fruits of Jewish development and land
purchases, so the cynical and self-seeking PLO "revolutionaries" used
the billions of dollars donated by the Arab oil states and the
international community to lead a luxurious lifestyle in sumptuous
hotels and villas, globe-trotting in grand style, acquiring properties,
and making financial investments worldwide—while millions of ordinary
Palestinians scrambled for a livelihood.
This process reached its peak following the September 1993 signing of
the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-government
Arrangements (DOP, or Oslo I) and the establishment of the Palestinian
Authority. For all his rhetoric about Palestinian independence, Arafat
had never been as interested in the attainment of statehood as in the
violence attending its pursuit. In the late 1970s, he told his close
friend and collaborator, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, that
the Palestinians lacked the tradition, unity, and discipline to become a
formal state, and that a Palestinian state would be a failure from the
first day.[30]
Once given control of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and
Gaza as part of the Oslo process, he made this bleak prognosis a
self-fulfilling prophecy, establishing a repressive and corrupt regime
in the worst tradition of Arab dictatorships where the rule of the gun
prevailed over the rule of law and where large sums of money donated by
the international community for the benefit of the civilian Palestinian
population were diverted to funding racist incitement, buying weaponry,
and filling secret bank accounts. Extensive protection and racketeering
networks run by PA officials proliferated while the national budget was
plundered at will by PLO veterans and Arafat cronies (in May 1997, for
example, the first-ever report by the PA's comptroller stated that $325
million, out of the 1996 budget of $800 million had been "wasted" by
Palestinian ministers and agencies or embezzled by officials).[31]
Arafat himself held a secret Tel Aviv bank account accessible only to
him and his personal advisor Muhammad Rashid, in which he insisted that
Israel deposit the tax receipts collected on imports to the Palestinian
territories (rather than transfer them directly to the PA). In
1994-2000, nearly eleven billion shekels (about US$2.5 billion) were
reportedly paid into this account, of which only a small, unspecified
part reached its designated audience.[32]
Small wonder that, in 2004, the French authorities opened a
money-laundering inquiry into suspect regular transfers into the Paris
bank accounts held by Arafat's wife Suha, who resided there with their
daughter. After Arafat's death, Suha was reportedly promised an annual
pension of $22 million to cover her sumptuous lifestyle, paid from an
alleged $4 billion "secret fortune" managed personally by the PA
president and kept in a number of bank accounts in Tel Aviv, London, and
Zurich.[33]
Though this breathtaking corruption played an important role in
Hamas's landslide electoral victory of January 2006, the PLO/PA
leadership seems to have learned nothing and to have forgotten nothing.
Not only did Abbas, who succeeded Arafat as PLO chairman and PA
president, blatantly ignore the results of the only (semi) democratic
elections in Palestinian history—establishing an alternative government
to the legally appointed Hamas government and refusing to hold new
elections upon the expiry of his presidency in January 2009—but he seems
to have followed in his predecessor's kleptocratic footsteps,
reportedly siphoning at least $100 million to private accounts abroad
and enriching his sons at the PA's expense.[34] In the words of Fahmi Shabaneh, former head of the Anti-Corruption Department in the PA's General Intelligence Service:

In his pre-election platform, President Abbas promised to
end financial corruption and implement major reforms, but he hasn't
done much since then. Unfortunately, Abbas has surrounded himself with
many of the thieves and officials who were involved in theft of public
funds and who became icons of financial corruption. … Some of the most
senior Palestinian officials didn't have even $3,000 in their pocket
when they arrived [after the signing of the Oslo accords]. Yet we
discovered that some of them had tens, if not hundreds, of millions of
dollars in their bank accounts. … Had it not been for the presence of
the Israeli authorities in the West Bank, Hamas would have done [there]
what they did in the Gaza Strip. It's hard to find people in the West
Bank who support the Palestinian Authority. People are fed up with the
financial corruption and mismanagement of the Palestinian Authority.[35]

Conclusion

For nearly a century, Palestinian leaders have missed no opportunity
to impede the development of Palestinian civil society and the
attainment of Palestinian statehood. Had Hajj Amin Husseini chosen to
lead his constituents to peace and reconciliation with their Jewish
neighbors, the Palestinians would have had their independent state over a
substantial part of mandate Palestine by 1948, if not a decade earlier,
and would have been spared the traumatic experience of dispersal and
exile. Had Arafat set the PLO from the start on the path to peace and
reconciliation instead of turning it into one of the most murderous and
corrupt terrorist organizations in modern times, a Palestinian state
could have been established in the late 1960s or the early 1970s; in
1979, as a corollary to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty; by May 1999,
as part of the Oslo process; or at the very latest, with the Camp David
summit of July 2000. Had Abbas abandoned his predecessors' rejectionist
path, a Palestinian state could have been established after the
Annapolis summit of November 2007, or during President Obama's first
term after Benjamin Netanyahu broke with the longstanding Likud precept
by publicly accepting in June 2009 the two-state solution and agreeing
to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
But then, the attainment of statehood would have shattered
Palestinian leaders' pan-Arab and Islamist delusions, not to mention the
kleptocratic paradise established on the backs of their long suffering
subjects. It would have transformed the Palestinians in one fell swoop
from the world's ultimate victim into an ordinary (and most likely
failing) nation-state thus terminating decades of unprecedented
international indulgence. It would have also driven the final nail in
the PLO's false pretense to be "the sole representative of the
Palestinian people" (already dealt a devastating blow by Hamas's 2006
electoral rout) and would have forced any governing authority to abide,
for the first time in Palestinian history, by the principles of
accountability and transparency. Small wonder, therefore, that whenever
confronted with an international or Israeli offer of statehood,
Palestinian leaders would never take "yes" for an answer.

Efraim Karsh, editor of the Middle East Quarterly,
is professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King's College
London and professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University where
he is also a senior research associate at the BESA Center for Strategic
Studies. This article is part of a wider study prepared under the
auspices of the BESA Center.

We are hypocrites and cowards - we take freedom for granted as it is eroding underneath our feet‏

Message to offended Muslims

A GOOD, TRUE STORY NOT KNOWN BY MANY.....Air Force.

The IDF’s Minorities in Numbers and Pictures

In honor of IDF Diversity Week, we present diversity through numbers and pictures. Each year, more and more Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouin and immigrants from around the world take on the responsibility of defending Israel.

MUSLIMS:

Muslim Arab Israelis are not required to draft in the IDF, but there are many who volunteer. In 2013, there were over 200 Muslims serving in the IDF and over 300 in the reserves.

What happened?

Mark Hasten Tribute Video Touro College

Housing Quiz

The Record-so far...!

CBS special on Bengazi

Report: 83 percent of doctors have considered quitting over Obamacare

Sally Nelson

Eighty-three percent of American physicians have considered leaving their practices over President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, according to a survey released by the Doctor Patient Medical Association.

Islamization on the move

"What we are dealing with is Islamization. Islamization is the imposition of ideological norms in increasing severity. Like Nazification, it transforms a society by remaking it in its own image from the largest to the smallest of details."Daniel Greenfield

Toronto rejects Anti-Israel Ads...

Shrinking Lands

Why Israel opposes international forces in the jordan valley/

/why-israel-opposes-international-forces-in-the-jordan-valley/

Islam is Islam, And That’s It

Back in 2007, when confronted with the phrase “moderate Islam”, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan famously responded: “These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading and annotating this video: View video at http://gatesofvienna.net/

There's no racist like a liberal racist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vz4PjxSmtoI

Ex-Navy SEAL Drops Bombshell On FOX: Says Government is Creating Conditions to Impose Martial Law R

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDuds14OBiE#t=156

American surprise

The Nairobi Mall Massacre

Ninh Chu Ninh Chu

Islam Untied

Platitudes about Islam being a faith of peace are not credible anymore. Islam is only as good as the way its followers practice it; and if they have created killing fields in the name of Islam, then Islam will be recognized by the silence of those who did not speak out when their faith was being massacred to massacre humanity.

AFTERBURNER w/ BILL WHITTLE: The Lynching

What-are you against peace?

Sydney Wake Up The Horrific Muslim Infiltration Of Britain - Luton

Kerry: 'Core Issue of Instability ... Is the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict'‏

Kerry is no friend. By endorsing the "Arab peace initiative" he shows his true intentions and beliefs . And by endorsing linkage he shows that he is either a liar or a fool.Syria is on fire, Egypt is at best incredibly unstable and this is due to Israel? It is out in the open!

A word to left-wing students

In their own words-ru listening?

"The lesson these Islamist groups appear to be drawing from events in Egypt is that democratic engagement with opponents is pointless. And that doesn't bode well for countries with strong Islamist movements..."

Flashback: Obama Admits He Cut Medicare

Another Democratic slogan blown to h....

Are you aware that in 2013, Middle class taxes go up-significantly?

In January of next year, the federal income tax rate for middle-class taxpayers is scheduled to rise from 25 percent to 28 percent, and the payroll tax is scheduled to rise from 13.3 percent to 15.3 percent… This drives the marginal tax rate based on the aforementioned three taxes to 48.12 percent. Add in state and local property, corporate, excise, and other state and local taxes, and the percentage of each additional dollar that is taxed hovers around 50 percent… When half of each additional dollar earned is taxed away, taxpayers experience a disincentive to start businesses or expand existing ones. This leads to fewer jobs being created.

When nations and cultures ignore the early warning signs of the infiltration of radical Islam

The UK has 85 sharia courts. France has over 750 “no go zones,” Muslim enclaves where even French police don’t enter.

Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDKk15KcqNk&feature=email

No such thing as "Islamophobia"

However, if you do not want your positions challenged or criticized or even researched, make up a new "phobia"-shout it long enough and some "people", agenda driven, will use it. Ay, yes, the false term does keep many, many financially rewarded-follow the money.gs don morris, Ph.D.

Khader Adnan: Leader of Islamic jihad or innocent baker?

Why is HAMAS Inside Tampa Schools?

Clare Lopez

Kelly Miliziano, who teaches history classes at Steinbrenner High School in the Tampa, Florida area apparently thinks it’s perfectly OK to invite a senior official of a HAMAS-affiliated organization into her classroom to discuss Islam with her students. According to local media reports, not only has this been going on for years, but in spite of the civil and criminal proceedings that could result from such reckless negligence, the Hillsborough County school superintendent, Mary Ellen Elia, and the chairman of the school board, Candy Olson, also expressed approval for students under their responsibility to be exposed repeatedly to guest speaker, Hassan Shibly, who is the Executive Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the Tampa area.More...

Omar Barghouti's Propaganda at USC on January 12, 2012

Did You Know... Ignoring the Call to Islam will Bring Jihad

‘Conquest through Da’wa [proselytizing] that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through Da’wa.’ -- Yousef al-Qaradawi , Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader The Arabic word ‘Da’wa’ means the “call to Islam.” But do not think that Da’wa is the same thing as an invitation to an optional holiday event. The classical Islamic doctrine of jihad mandates that enemies must be given the opportunity to convert to Islam or pay the jizya tax before it is permissible to attack them.Clare M. Lopez

Americans are opening their eyes

Advertisers fleeing All-American Muslim 'propaganda'The American people are seeing through the propaganda piece that is TLC's All-American Muslim reality/dawah show, and responsible advertisers are fleeing in droves. The show aims to combat a trumped-up problem, "Islamophobia," by presenting Muslims who are just ordinary folk, and

Why Islam is Incompatible with Western Law

Col. Allen West answers a question on muslim terror

Challah's Gaza Rocket Counter

This Month:4Last Month:191

This Year: 562

Total since 2002: 12055

Cease fire Hamas style!!

Thanks http://challahhuakbar.blogspot.com/

"Islamophobia"

"Islamophobia" was a politically manipulative coinage designed to silence critics of Islamic supremacism.It was invented, deliberately, by a Muslim Brotherhood front organization, the International Institute for Islamic Thought, which is based in Northern Virginia.

10 Unknown West Bank Facts

Liberals Redefine "Extremism" and the "Political Center"

On March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview

with PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here's what he said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist.The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

Don’t ever call it ‘West Bank’ again

In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, a PLO executive, said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism."

"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

Who do the territories belong to?

The legal borders of Israel under international law

The Arab Apartheid

Ben-Dror YeminiIn 1948, the Arab countries refused to accept the UN partition proposal and they launched a war of annihilation against the State of Israel which had barely been established. All precedents in this matter showed that the party that starts the war - and with a declaration of annihilation, yet - pays a price for it. Between 550,000 and 710,000 Arabs fled because of the war and a larger number of 850,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries (the "Jewish nakba").Population exchanges and expulsions were the norm at that time, occurring in dozens of other conflict points and affecting about 52 million people. In all the population exchange precedents that occurred during or at the end of an armed conflict, there was no return of refugees to the previous region, which had turned into a new national state. Only the Arab states acted completely differently from the rest of the world. Instead of assimilating the refugees, they crushed them despite the fact that they were their coreligionists and members of the Arab nation - instituting a regime of apartheid. So the "nakba" was not caused by the actual dispossession, which had also been experienced by tens of millions of others. The "nakba" is the story of the apartheid, oppression, abuse and denial of rights suffered by the Arab refugees at the hands of the Arab countries. (Maariv)

How Liberals Argue

Hebrew Univ-you rock!!

Judea and Samaria are not "occupied" lands-why?

Judea-Samaria were not only parts of the ancient Jewish homeland but were recognized as part of the Jewish National Home recognized by San Remo and the League of Nations [1920, 1922] and by the UN charter [article 80; 1945].

"Political Correctness."

"Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rapidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."Texas A&M

Christopher Monckton Speaking in St. Paul on the climate issues

International Law and Military Operations in Practice - Col. Richard Kemp

"Islamist fighting groups study the international laws of armed conflict carefully and they understand it well. They know that a British or Israeli commander and his men are bound by international law and the rules of engagement that flow from it. They then do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy's main weaknesses. Their very modus operandi is built on the correct assumption that Western armies will normally abide by the rules, while these insurgents employ a deliberate policy of operating consistently outside international law. "

Lost Historical Moments

WHAT Golda Meir actually said...

"When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist." Golda Meir June 15, 1969: Interview in the UK Sunday Times

What Rabin’s last Knesset speech really said:repudiation of a Palestinian state

Rabin ruled out a fully sovereign Palestinian state :

“We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority.”

Rabin ruled out a total withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and thus a return to the pre-June 1967 borders :

“The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.”

Rabin ruled out withdrawing form the Jordan Valley:

“The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.”

Rabin ruled out uprooting settlement blocs, like the Gush Katif bloc in Gaza (which was subsequently uprooted by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon):

“The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.

AND

Rabin ruled out removing any settlement before coming to a full peace agreement with the Palestinians:

“I want to remind you: we committed ourselves, that is, we came to an agreement, and committed ourselves before the Knesset, not to uproot a single settlement in the framework of the interim agreement, and not to hinder building for natural growth.”

Rabin insisted on Israel retaining full security control of the borders with Egypt and Jordan, contrary to Israel’s relinquishment of the Philadelphia Corridor on the border with Egypt:

“The responsibility for external security along the borders with Egypt and Jordan, as well as control over the airspace above all of the territories and Gaza Strip maritime zone, remains in our hands.”

Correcting Oslo Myths-Part 2

3) Kuttab laments that the post-1993 Oslo process resulted in a Palestinian Authority "whose ministers and legislators are not guaranteed passage between Gaza and the West Bank ...."

Before free passage or other perquisites, PA leaders were obligated, among other things, to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, end anti-Israeli, antisemitic incitement in schools, mosques, and communications media, and resolve all outstanding issues through peaceful negotiations. They met none of these commitments, sometimes bolstering terrorism and greatly increasing incitement.

4) Kuttab complains that under Oslo the PA got "lightly armed police ---- but no real sovereignty over the land or contiguity between our communities in Gaza and the West Bank."

Oslo agreements repeatedly were revised, regardless of Palestinian non-compliance, until the authorized number of police grew from 8,000 to 40,000. Though they were to be the only armed forces in the territories, Israeli estimates early in the second intifada put the number of gunmen - police, "security services," terrorists, and armed gangs - at 85,000. Their armament reportedly included not only heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, but also anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.

Sovereignty was to be negotiated in the envisioned 1998 "final status" talks - after a five-year period of confidence-building. Palestinian leadership chronically undermined the process. Palestinian terrorism made the 1993 - 1998 Oslo period more deadly for Israelis than the 15 years preceding it.

The United States doesn't have contiguity between the lower 48 states and Alaska and Hawaii; territorial contiguity between the West Bank and Gaza Strip - that is, through the 20 miles of Israeli territory between them - was never promised and would destroy Israeli contiguity.

5) "Palestinians have been made to endure hundreds of checkpoints in the West Bank, an eight-foot wall deep in our territories, and tight Israeli control over borders."

The security barrier is not "deep in Palestinian territories," but rather encompasses less than 8 percent of Judea and Samaria, and is mostly a fence, rarely a wall; the land in question is not "our [Palestinian] territories" but disputed territory to which, according to the authors of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, Jews as well as Arabs have claims; and there are no international borders, only the 1949 armistice lines with Jordan. Under 242, borders remain to be negotiated. As for checkpoints - like the security barrier and "tight Israeli control" - Palestinian Arabs precipitated these measures themselves. No terrorism and there would be no fence or tight Israeli control and few checkpoints - like before the first intifada.

Correcting Some Oslo Myths

1) In Oslo "Israeli, Palestinian and other world leaders promised that ... Palestinian sovereignty would be solidified."

No, they didn't. The 1993 Declaration of Principles and subsequent Oslo agreements outlined a process by which final status negotiations about the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be reached. The process required an end to anti-Israel terrorism and incitement and a commitment to peaceful negotiations. The PA, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other terrorist groups, sabotaged the process from the start.

2) "The reality is that, in defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which states that it is inadmissible to occupy land by force, Palestinian territories are still under foreign military occupation."Wrong again. Resolution 242 (1967) does note "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." It also affirms the right of every state in the area "to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." There were no "Palestinian territories." Jordan occupied the West Bank, Egypt controlled Gaza. Israel did not have "secure and recognized boundaries," so retention of some of those territories was possible under 242. Israel is not a "foreign" military occupier in the West Bank but, pending final negotiations, the lawful military administrator as a result of a successful war of self-defense.

About Me

Semi-retired Professor, now also permanent resident of Israel;divides time between both countries-serves on several Boards of Directors for Israel advocacy groups;Chana, resident of Jerusalem, JCPA member